instincts to
protect her child from a fate worse than death if she should marry a man
who had already fallen. She shared in the fullest degree with Bauer's
deep fear that Helen might, in her desire for the soft and beautiful
things of wealth, risk her very life itself, not because she knew she
was doing it, but partly through ignorance of the real character of the
man who had the unblushing selfishness to ask a pure girl like Helen to
accept him as a husband, knowing himself to be what he was.

And Bauer, measuring in his slow but not stupid fashion all the
consequences of his action in warning Mrs. Douglas, knowing clearly the
code of morals governing men like Van Shaw and the wicked and
unchristian standard of even so-called Christian society in condemning
what it called "telling on others," nevertheless went forward to do what
seemed to him to be only necessary in the name of common honour and
decency.

The fact that Van Shaw had found out what he had done did not disturb
him greatly. The only thing that troubled him now was to hold himself
sufficiently in hand. He had never hated anyone in his life except this
rich man's son and he had been slow to entertain that feeling for him.
But it had grown like a tropical plant within the last three days. And
all the old Teutonic rage latent in him was at the boiling point
whenever he thought of Van Shaw and Helen together. He said to himself
there in the darkness that if there had been light enough to see Van
Shaw's sneering face he would have struck it. He remembered hearing his
own father say once that one of his ancestors at Lausbrachen had choked
the life out of a family enemy, using only one hand around the man's
throat. He was so afraid of himself now that he involuntarily stepped
back away from Van Shaw and Van Shaw noted it and put the action down to
cowardice or fear.

"Well, are you going to keep out of my affairs? Is it any business of
yours whether I try to make friends with the Douglases? Or
perhaps------" he suddenly changed his tone as if a new thought had
broken in on his mind. "Look here, Bauer. Perhaps--well, maybe you don't
understand------I am going to marry Miss Douglas!"

"What!" Bauer cried out. He stepped nearer Van Shaw and Van Shaw stepped
back, nearer the edge of the rock.

"Well," Van Shaw laughed. "That is, as soon as she says yes, I am. My
intentions are all right. But--" and his accustomed mood quickly
reasserted itself, "I warn you to k